What The Open Index is
The Open Index is a free, community-curated catalogue of the web — currently 794 websites filed by hand into 22 categories. It is a modern take on the directories that once mapped the early internet: you browse by subject and discover sites a search engine would never surface, instead of typing keywords and hoping.
How we review
A person checks every submission before it goes live. We confirm the site is real and reachable, drop it in the right category, and pull a short description from the page itself. Malware, scams and empty doorway pages are rejected.
Outbound links use rel="nofollow" — The Open Index is a directory, not a place to buy ranking. Curating by hand is exactly what keeps it from rotting into link spam.
Always free
There is no paid tier and no "priority review" fee. The index grows because real owners add real sites, not because anyone paid to jump the queue.
Who runs it
The Open Index is kept by a small editorial team that reviews submissions and tends the categories. Found a listing that's broken or in the wrong place? Tell us and we'll sort it.
Add your site
If you run a legitimate website, add it in under a minute — pick a category, paste the URL, and we handle the description.